jonnifer's Profile

We frequently rent an apartment or home for our vacations and prefer it to hotels. We like having a kitchen and the amenities of home. Now that we will be traveling with a baby, we'll be even more inclined to choose that over hotels. There are tons of great options out there through management companies as well, if you don't want to deal with individual homeowners.

Cute house, cute family. Love all the nods to your family background, hobbies, previous jobs, etc. Personality really shines through. Sidonie is adorable.

One question - can you share the exterior paint colors? Love that shade of green with the cream trim and red door.

I actually would have loved to see a photo of the unfinished basement. Is it a full basement (as in, when you finish it, you double your square footage)? I was wondering where little Ramona slept!
I actually really love the kitchen. Tiny but efficient and bright.

I'm definitely one that prefers empty spaces/minimally decorated & furnished rooms over something so packed with things the eye can never relax. I'm currently putting together a room for our first baby due in a few weeks. I have a chair, a table & lamp, the baby's bed, a small dresser and a rug. My neighbor asked when I was going to "finish" the room - to me it was! :)

I think the white trim would pop a bit more if the walls were a slightly different color. As it is now, it's a nice improvement but it doesn't really make a huge difference in the before vs. after photos. And now that paper lantern/chandelier looks a little boring - it used to contrast nicely against the dark trim. However, you like it and feel like it makes a difference to your space and it's a good tip for other folks looking for a "quick change" (though, painting trim is my nemesis, i'd rather paint the wall!).

Just bought this last week for our guest bathroom - which completely lacks storage. Fits perfectly in the space next to the sink and now stores everything and brings fun color to the room. Really though, you could use it just about anywhere in your house. Thought it also might be nice for potted herbs, wheel them around to get the most sun! Go get it LaureltQ!

any ideas how to keep wandering cats out of your yard? my neighbor has 4 and it seems like any sandy/slightly soft ground in my backyard (including our garden space!) has become their litterbox. I don't mind cats, but I'd really like an effective way to keep them OUT.

Can you share a source for the french/english counting print? Lovely rooms, look like spaces for big imaginations!

I've seen many homes where the TV over the fireplace is done in an aesthetically pleasing way, but still find them uncomfortable to watch hung that high given the size of most living rooms. We're fortunate enough to have a basement family room at our house and so we have the TV down there. I love not having it the centerpiece of our main floor living room, but that's not an option for a lot of people and so many homes these days are designed so that the only place you can hang the tv is over the fireplace, unless you want to choose which should be the focal point of the room.
I would suggest finding a mounting bracket that allows you to tilt or lower the tv when in use. A friend of ours has one of these for their over-the-fireplace flatscreen and it's perfect. They can easily just pull out and lower down to a better viewing height and then push it back flush when not in use. I think they found theirs on Amazon?

When we remodeled our 90 yr old house a few years ago, we went with IKEA cabinets and have been so pleased. Our previous house we spent close to $15K on cabinets and they were so crappy! Our entire kitchen (appliances, cabinets, granite, lighting fixtures, etc) cost us less than $15K this time around and in large part because we only spent about $3K on the cabinets. We went with RAMSJO in the white wash. They were super easy to put together and install. They can take a lot of abuse and still look brand new.
We used the money we saved and found a good local granite supplier for the counters, went to Sears and bought nice appliances during once of their sales, used restoration hardware for the knobs & pulls. I think the key is not buying everything at IKEA because then your kitchen looks like a store display. :)
If you want to see photos of our kitchen - I have before & after pictures on my blog:
http://jenfromtheblock.com/the-bungalow/